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Setting the Record Straight on the Clean Power Plan

What the Challengers Got Wrong at the D.C. Circuit Oral Argument

On September 27, opponents of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan presented their case against the rule in a hearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The Clean Power Plan aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s existing power plants. A coalition of states, utilities, coal companies, and other industry groups have sought to block the rule since it was first proposed in June 2014, while a competing group of states, municipalities, power companies, environmental and public health organizations, and clean energy producers have intervened to support the EPA.

Over the course of the seven-hour hearing, the petitioners challenging the Clean Power Plan asserted and implied a number of things that don’t stand up to scrutiny. This report sets the record straight on some of their more notable misstatements.